Writer / Director Gregory Orr's evil cloning
film 'Recreator' begins with Craig (Alexander Nifong), his
girlfriend Tracy (Stella Maeve) and his number one boy Derek
(Jamal Mallory-McCree) hopping on a rowboat to have some fun
in the wild in the form of camping. It doesn't take long
to recognize that as far as girlfriends go, Tracy is not a
very good one. She's bitchy, self-important and whiney,
and most importantly she doesn't seem to be all that crazy
about her boyfriend, who admittedly seems a little low on
backbone. Also Tracy doesn't understand the basic
concepts behind camping. For instance, Tracy has to go
to the bathroom, but instead of going in the woods as any
reasonable thinking person would understand while camping,
Tracy breaks into the plush cabin of a wealthy couple, who
aren't home at the time, walks around a bit, grabs some
reading material, then casually squeezes off a few in their
toilet. What kind of person does something like
that? Tracy, that's who.
About that couple that owns the cabin… they're kind of dead…
in a way… sort of. There was this weird storm,
electricity zapped something on this island and the next thing
you know Dr. Frank Miller (John de Lancie) and his wife
Elizabeth (Laura Moss) are being replaced by newer, better
versions of Dr. Frank Miller and Elizabeth. Say
what? How did that happen?
Back to our trio of young people, all three of them are now
illegally cohabiting in the cabin because Derek is afraid of
lightning, even though he's slated to go to Afghanistan in a
few weeks. Then they had the misfortune making the
acquaintance of the murderous versions of Dr. Miller and his
wife, and it looked to be all but over for them, until they
were rescued by themselves. Getting a little weird,
isn't it?
Obviously Craig, Tracy and Derek are freaking
out since they are now occupying space with these almost
perfect copies of themselves. Almost perfect. You
see these copies are just a little bit better. Smarter,
stronger, faster, funnier and they've retained all of their
memories so they know everything that our kids have done that
is stupid or wrong and they can improve upon these
foibles. For instance Original Craig is bit of a wimp,
where New Craig is forceful, willful and strong and doesn't
have any of Original Craig's self-worth issues. New
Derek is almost completely disgusted with Original Derek and
his vast intellectual shortcomings, but we gotta admit that
New Tracy seems a lot nicer than Original Tracy.
Despite the fact that everybody seems to be getting along at
the moment, the clones know that this can only end one way
since the originals have the lives they need, and the
originals are clearly aware of this as well. Outmatched
physically and intellectually, I'm not liking the originals
chances of getting off this island.
As it shakes out, 'Recreator' is a fairly entertaining,
albeit slow moving piece of Science Fiction tinged melodrama
that we did ultimately enjoy, but we must mention that the
originals did have one major thing going for them over their
clones. Without getting all into the 'why' of the clones
which is explained in this movie in a reasonable fashion, just
know that the DNA to create the clones occurred when one
flushed the toilet. Thus the clones are essentially made
out of dookey. So while my clone might've been all gung
ho to kill my ass an take my place in this world with his
amazingly superior gifts, I would've pointed out to him that I
spawned from two people who were sort of in love with each
other, at least at that moment, while he came from a
turd. I don't know if this would've helped me live
longer, but it sure would've made me feel better.
There are a number of things that help push 'Recreator' along,
starting with the concept because clone movies, for whatever
reason, fascinate me. Orr did a fine job of setting up
his story and spinning his tale with only a minimum of head
scratching discombobulation, which is an accomplishment since
there is the tendency to go off the deep end when your film
launches itself off of an admittedly wacky concept.
There were inconsistencies, but they were few and they weren't
obtrusive. The director and his team also used some
clever camera tricks to get his actors into the scenery to get
the originals and the clones occupying the same space which
also helped sell the concept.
'Recreator' is slow however and probably could've benefited
from a slightly quicker pace, and the acting overall from the
relatively unknown cast was solid, if not inconsistent at
times. We did appreciate that the originals and the
clones had different personalities, though the Tracy's
probably weren't different enough. Starting out we were
of the mindset that while Alexander Nilfong is a good looking
kid, he didn't seem to be much an actor, reminding me a little
of Ashton Kutcher minus the charm, but his clone amped things
up considerably so clearly he was just playing his original
character down.
I'm always on board for a good clone movie and while
'Recreator' is slow, maybe boring to some, but sticking with
it proved to be reasonably rewarding.
